


Searching for Sharks

by pentapus



Category: Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede
Genre: Cimorene loves sharks, F/M, Mendanbar loves science, New Years Resolutions 2008, Yuletide, and badass ladies who are hot like burning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:43:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sharks, sir? Really?" Willin said. "Forgive me, it's just--are you sure this is the image the company wants to send?"</p><p>The Enchanted Forest meets the Pacific Northwest, academia, virtual reality -- and Cimorene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Searching for Sharks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [globalfruitbat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/globalfruitbat/gifts).



> Written for globalfruitbat in the New Year Resolutions 2008 Challenge. The sciency bits come from this book I read about sharks (it was called _Sharks_ ).

"Sharks, sir? Really?" Willin said. "Forgive me, it's just--are you sure this is the image the company wants to send?"

"Come on, Willin. The Discovery channel's always telling me about the shark's undeserved reputation." Mendanbar signaled right, exiting the freeway into Seattle proper. "Anyway, you shouldn't nag me while I'm driving. What if something happened?"

Willin sighed, voice tinny in the rental car's speakers. "I see you neglected to make use of the car I arranged, sir. I'll take some comfort in the fact that the suit I laid out is missing."

"Uh, yeah," Mendanbar said, figuring that at least he was wearing part of the suit. He pushed his sleeves a little father up his arms and ignored the pants crumpled in the back seat. Not his fault, really, the eForest Transportable Remote Entry Equipment just didn't fit in the pockets of a pair of slacks.

Parking had gotten worse, but otherwise the Seattle waterfront hadn't changed much since Mendanbar had been there as a student at the University of Washington.

(Strictly speaking, not very long ago at all, but all of Mendanbar's life before the _Phone Call_ had taken on a certain foggy quality. The funeral had been suffocating like a swim with lead pajamas, but it was after that, when Willin had come to talk to him, that Mendanbar had experienced a bizarre perspective shift: Willin worked for him now. Mendanbar was the head of the company. Which in itself was code for: time to plug him in and see if he fried.)

Snug in cargo pocket of his canvas shorts, a message light flashed in the soothing gray shell of the eForest TREE. Mendanbar noticed it as an itch in the back of his mind: Call waiting - Willin.

 _Ho-hum_ , Mendanbar thought, and pushed open the doors to a seaside surf shop.

Twenty minutes later, he was strolling along the shore, his white dress shirt unbuttoned over a sky blue, long-sleeved surf shirt made of a material not found in nature, a shark fin logo across the front. Appropriate, he thought, handing over the cash (how retro!) for a snow cone from a snack vendor, the lurid red and blue smearing into dirty purple at the center. This was better; he felt like he was fitting in.

As he moved through the covered market--a mix of fresh fish and tourist thingamabobs--he came to a set of crowded docks. The boats here were shining yachts and sailboats and motley tour boats. Somewhere in the middle, a small clump of scruffy graduate students were hanging about a respectably sized research vessel christened _Miss Ophelia_. It was not their usual mooring place, but the promise of a mild publicity stunt and funding had drawn the project to more densely populated climes.

Something on a nearby park bench caught his eye: an abandoned baseball cap, fraying and faded and gray with dirt, the sorry looking logo of a crab shack Mendanbar had never heard of across the front. Regardless, it seemed to fit in with the general look, and he slapped it on his head. Tipping back his snow cone cup to drink the chilly syrup, he strolled towards the _Miss Ophelia_.

A few spectators lingered, attracted by the battered electronic equipment stacked on the dock and by the air of purposeful busyness. Also, probably, by "SHARK RESEARCH CENTER" emblazoned across the prow of the boat. A small girl sat on her father's shoulders, fists in his hair. A pair of skater boys craned their necks, boards leaning against their thighs.

Mendanbar wandered up in his found hat and new surf gear. He coughed into one fist and struck what he hoped was a casual pose. A big guy turned away from a stack of crates, scratching his beard, and saw Mendanbar waiting. His shirt said `I roll twenties'. Clearly, he was one of Mendanbar's people.

"Oh, hey," the guy said. "You got here, awesome."

"Hey, Roger!" someone bellowed from aboard ship.

"Ok, hold on, wait right there. I'll go grab somebody to give you the hey-ho."

Mendanbar waved him away agreeably and waded into the thick of the crowd. It was the usual mash-up of new students, visiting researchers, and joint projects. Nobody looked at him cockeyed for being unfamiliar. He liked to think the hat was also helping.

He found himself sucking on the last of his snow cone at the edge of the dock on the far side of the crowd. Another unshaven graduate student in flannel and construction boots bent over a box of radios which he seemed to be adjusting. A smaller craft, not much more than a motor mounted on a bright orange raft with a few planks for seats, bobbed gently in the water behind him. A row of coolers and bagged equipment were stacked purposefully in front of it, seawater beading along their surface.

"So, what's the plan today?"

"Hmm?" the guy said. Looking up he gave Mendanbar a once over, and seemed to come to some conclusion that satisfied him. He looked back down at his work with an offhand shrug. "You know, just the funding-hooker dance. Waiting for the guy to get here."

"Happen often?" Mendanbar said.

The guy looked up at that, Mendanbar's camouflage in danger. "Yeah. Funding is about what makes people sound good at cocktail parties. You with Dr. Young?"

"No, I'm just here for today. Uh," Mendanbar added, "temp work."

"Oh!" the guy said, face clearing. "The _boat_ guy--"

A woman walked up to the crates, tossing a backpack into the little boat. She wore her wetsuit folded down with its arms tied around her waist and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. Flyaway strands of black hair stood out above her forehead, escaped from the pair of braids wrapped around her head.

Like a dog on a scent--or a shark--she looked right at Mendanbar and repeated, "Boat guy?"

"Oh, awesome, you're here." The guy with the radios waved a hand between Mendanbar and the woman in the wetsuit. "Hey, this is Cimorene."

Cimorene reached out and gripped Mendanbar's hand, the kind of handshake his dad's business advisors had sent him to classes to learn about. He tried not to stare at the obvious shadow of a fuchsia sports bra underneath her worn-thin t-shirt.

"This is the boat guy," said the radio guy. "Mike."

"Ah--right," Mendanbar said, in sudden mortal fear that Cimorene might wander off in search of the real Boat Guy Mike. "Yes, I, uh, I drive boats."

Cimorene jabbed a thumb behind her. "That boat?"

Mendanbar mimed the jerky motion of a hand on the lever of an outboard motor, too late realizing he was not sitting in a virtual habitat of eForest and that people--Cimorene--could see him. He stopped.

"That boat," he said with dignity.

"Great. I can't steer and tag at the same time."

"You going to wait for the internet millionaire?" radio guy said.

Cimorene eyed him. "You think we're going to take VR Aragorn on the shark tagging boat? You can call me from the yacht. I don't talk to silicon princes and eco-heroes."

"Aw, Cim, but I like watching them try to woo you with luxury."

Cimorene flipped him the bird, pulling out a pair of dark sunglasses. She tossed Mendanbar a key. "Hey, hero, let's get moving."

"Right-o," Mendanbar said. He crumpled the snow cone wrapper and tossed it into a garbage bin on the dock. When he wiped his mouth, it came away stained purple.

They loaded up with a pair of coolers from the dock and a couple of radios. When she hopped from the dock to the boat, Mendanbar found himself having a moment alone with the outboard motor. The TREE rested quiescently in his pocket, waiting for his inquiry.

Cimorene was unmooring the boat, miraculously turned away. Oh, well, he knew how to work these (in the virtual world anyway). He gave the handle a yank, and the engine turned over. A roaring vibration moved through the seat and into his bones, impressively real.

"Ready?" Cimorene said. The sun behind her cast a sharp shadow over her tanned and freckled face and lit up the halo of her hair.

Mendanbar bore down on the throttle and they shot away from the dock. Cimorene let out a startled whoop.

"Um," Mendanbar said as they passed the gleaming fiberglass hulls of the sail boats and emerged into the sound, "Which way?"

"Head north, stick to the coastline. Did Morwen tell you what we're after today?"

"I just got the time and place and a request to show up," Mendanbar said honestly.

"She can be a little too straightforward sometimes." Cimorene laughed. "We're after salmon sharks today. Relative of the great white and one of the fastest fish in the sea. They can also maintain a constant internal temperature even in sub-arctic waters."

Mendanbar's eyebrows went up. "And that is--unusual."

"Bingo. And that's what we're measuring this week: internal temp and geographic location."

"Not to sound entirely inexperienced, but--how? The internal temperature business, I mean."

Cimorene leaned back against the boat's inflatable prow, wind rippling across her t-shirt as they moved over the waves. She smiled wide and white. Her sunglasses looked like something the 90s had thought were futuristic, the effect a bit like a predatory cyborg – an eForest nightshade or something. "Pete's tailing a few animals that have already been radio-tagged. We'll wrap some Vemco units with temp sensors in frozen herring, and try to tempt the sharks into eating them."

Mendanbar's eyebrows went up a little higher. "Ah."

"So what about you, how'd you end up on the other end of Morwen's call for boat guys?"

"Oh, I worked at a shipyard in Teleras."

Cimorene shot him a baffled look. "Teleras? Where's that?"

"It's in California," Mendanbar deadpanned.

Her eyes narrowed.

"I also tried Comp Sci at UDub, but I wasn't much good at programming," Mendanbar offered. (None of the eForest CEOs were--until they got plugged in. He'd been okay at the theory, which made a sort of sense, considering all the things they didn't know about eForest. Like where it came from, who had created it, or even what it _was_. Nobody at the company talked about those questions publicly though, and the wiki page confidently listed one of Mendanbar's distant cousins as its inventor.)

Cimorene was watching him like she was reserving judgment. The radio in the bin at her feet started making noise.

"Hey, Pete," Cimorene said, flicking the talk button with her thumb. Above them the sky stretched away wide and blue into forever. Mendanbar wasn't used to seeing this much sky.

"Cim, where are you? I've got a school of `em, four tagged, about a half mile off the tip of Dungeness Bay."

"They school?" Mendanbar said.

"Sometimes. Salmon sharks, always have to stick out from the crowd." She turned back to the radio. "Headed your way. See you in twenty, Cimorene out." A pause. "Hey, Pete, one more thing--any word on our prince of finance?"

"Still no show," the radio crackled.

"Thanks. Cim out."

Mendanbar kept up the pace, the boat slapping over the waves as they moved up the rocky Pacific coast. Cimorene hooked a hand in one of the handles along the prow and leaned into the spray, riding the boat's jerky ups and downs with the ease of experience.

Fifteen minutes later, a second little orange boat came into view, idling in the waves. Mendanbar cut the engine to a low putter. The new boat held only a thin man in a floppy camping hat. A buoy floated a short distance away, attached to something white and feathery like part of a soft pillow. Mendanbar realized it was actually a dismembered chunk of fish.

As he watched, a classic image--that single gray triangle--briefly broke the surface near the bait and subsided into the ocean.

Mendanbar let out a whistle. Cimorene laughed at him and went to work with one of the coolers, pulling out a silver fish shorter than her forearm and a pocket knife that opened with a _snikt_. She had the bin with the radios and the temperature loggers between her feet and started to cut into a fish. After a moment of quick work, she had a short row of herrings imbedded with temperature sensors.

She held up the first of her finished fish and electronic portmanteaus. "Now aim for the shark."

Mendanbar skimmed the boat around the bait, Cimorene perched on the prow looking for tapered silhouettes in the water. She had a new piece of equipment in her hand, something like an altered spear-fishing gun, the herring sticking off the end of it.

Ahead, the water frothed around the bait. Sunlight moved in water-shapes over a large gray form just below the surface. Mendanbar tapped the throttle and the little boat surged forward, running up against the bait. Cimorene made a startled sound as a sleek pointed head leapt forward. Jaws shifted, gray lips bared over red gums and rows of arrowhead teeth.

She didn't bother with the spear gun; just snatched up a herring and slung the little fish into the shark's gullet as its jaws closed on the bait, a bare inch from their orange hull. The shark shook its head from side to side, tearing off a chunk of fish flesh and spraying Mendanbar and Cimorene with briny water as he urged the boat away.

Cimorene collapsed into the front of the boat, dragging an arm across her face to wipe away the seawater. She was laughing in disbelief.

"Oh my god," Mendanbar said. "They're--big! How big are they? 15 feet?"

Still laughing, Cimorene said, "Maybe 9. But they're extraordinary, aren't they?

" _Yes_ ," Mendanbar said.

Cimorene showed him her teeth, a pleased, sharky sort of smile.

"Jesus Christ," came the shout from the other boat. "Who's your maverick over there, Cim?"

"He's new!" Cimorene shouted back. She might almost have sounded proprietary.

"Um?" Mendanbar said.

"You don't really have to get that close, but hey--nice driving."

"Oh."

Cimorene grinned. "It was a rush, that's for sure. You're pretty flashy, aren't you?"

Mendanbar wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not, but he decided to count Cimorene's smile a win. He turned the boat around to face back towards the bait, but this time he kept a more reasonable distance.

They scored two more sharks, herrings successfully swallowed, when they noticed the guy in the other boat waving at them with his radio. Mendanbar let the boat idle. Cimorene picked up her radio and stood to make her way back to Mendanbar's bench. She sat without waiting for him to scoot over. Mendanbar put on his most casual face. Cimorene didn't bat an eye, lifting the radio and leaning back thigh to thigh, wetsuit to cargo shorts.

"We've lost the bigwig," the radio said, fizzling in and out of static. "Roger says he showed up over an hour ago. Must have wandered into the tourist shops. We're heading out. Send Peter back, he'll bring the guy out if he shows up."

"Erm," Mendanbar started, "About that--"

The other boat started to turn to head back, the driver's chatter with headquarters playing out over Cimorene's radio. Cimorene held the radio absently in one hand, the other opening the second cooler sitting in the bottom of the boat. This one held snacks aimed at humans instead of sharks: reusable water bottles and energy bars by the local Seattle health food brand _Ballimore_. She nudged it towards Mendanbar with her foot, eyebrows up in a silent offer.

Mendanbar chose chocolate. Cimorene leaned over, the radio discussion continuing in the background. She frowned, and swapped his choice out with a second, peanut butter wrapping. "Never choose the dessert flavors," she advised seriously.

"Noted," Mendanbar said, saluting with the bar. Cimorene gave him another speculative look, nose wrinkling.

"--status update, Cim. Cim?" the radio was saying.

Cimorene coughed. "We've planted three of the Vemco units, we can do a few more if you like."

"Up to you," the radio said. Peter's boat was already a retreating orange shape to the south.

Cimorene turned to Mendanbar. "The big ship has more sophisticated receivers, so we'll just mess around here until they catch up."

"Do you know the frequencies?" Mendanbar said. He pulled the TREE out of his pocket, thumbs darting across the keyboard. "I could probably get it on this."

Cimorene said nothing.

Mendanbar looked up, forehead creased in concentration. "Ah?"

She was staring at the little eForest interface. "...what is that?"

"Well." All or nothing, Mendanbar thought. "I call it a TREE?"

Cimorene got a weird look on her face, what he could see of it underneath her nightshade glasses. Without looking away, she lifted the radio to her mouth and said, "Miss Ophelia, where's Teleras?"

"No clue, Cim."

"Ask Roger for me."

After a pause, a new voice spoke: "Teleras is the VoW outpost in eForest. Oh, that's `Verse of Warcraft for you reality purists."

"Right. Thanks, Roger."

"Roger that," Roger said.

Peter's voice came on the radio: "Still not fucking funny, Roger!"

Mendanbar was still pressed all along Cimorene's rather chilly side, and he gave her an uncertain half-wave with the fingers of one hand (still wrapped around the TREE).

"Drat," Cimorene said.

"Do you want me to stop driving the boat?" Mendanbar asked. "I'm actually well-versed in all the mechanics of the propulsion system and the fluid properties of ocean waves."

Cimorene grimaced. "Notwithstanding that your sentence would have struck fear into the heart of the hardiest sailor, you really aren't bad."

She squinted at him a few seconds more, and then pointed the same thoughtful expression at Peter's boat shrinking in the distance. Mendanbar waited, lips tight.

Cimorene lifted her radio to her mouth. "Never mind, Miss Ophelia. Found the bigwig. We're going to plant the rest of the Vemco units. See you then."

Mendanbar couldn't think of anything to say. Then he realized his communication quota had been filled by the fact that he was grinning like a crazy man.

"Alright," Cimorene said slowly. She frowned at him, and seemed to switch what she'd been going to say. "Where did you get that stupid hat?"

"I found it on a park bench."

"You--" Her lips quirked suddenly. When she pulled off her sunglasses to let them hang around her neck, her eyes were rueful. "I want you to know," she said finally, "I'm not usually this impulsive."

Mendanbar opened his mouth in confusion, but she'd already grabbed the brim of his hat and flipped it off him like the front page of a good book. She leaned forward to press her parted lips against his mouth, the hand holding his lucky hat curved against his cheek. Mendanbar pushed up against her--he always slouched when he used the TREE--sliding his hand up her arm over a bicep like a croquet ball.

Just as suddenly, she was pulling up and away, back to the prow in two quick steps. He'd forgotten the hat until she was sitting next to the herring cooler, pulling the fraying cap over her messy black hair. She looked back at him, sunglasses still hanging down and her dark eyes crinkled with satisfaction.

"What are you waiting for?" she said. "We've still got two more. Rev it up!"

Mendanbar revved it up.


End file.
